It has been a month since I posted to the Blog so I thought I would give you a brief update on my latest project. It is possibly the most difficult thing I have attempted with a camera. My objective is to capture night images of various landscapes around the Islands. My first targeted location has finally yielded some promising results. This is only after a dozen or so failures.

Photographing landscapes at night requires that several images be layered. For instance, one image will be the night sky. This image usually has a shutter time approaching 30 seconds. The landscape portion of the layered images requires much longer shutter times. In the case of my current project, between 15 and 20 minutes. Needless to say everything has to be right and your tripod has to be perfectly still. Factors that can destroy or influence an image include wind, tide levels, clouds, moon light and any type of extraneous light sources.

One byproduct of this project has been the utter beauty of walking the beaches of Sanibel at two in the morning under a full moon. The birds, calm waves and warm breezes are a wonderful experience and a true blessing.

I am excited about this new challenge and what type of interesting images may result. Stay tuned for further updates in the weeks ahead.